Yesterday evening saw the City of Terrace host an official neighborhood event to act as a soft opening for their brand new Pickleball courts that are located near Skeena View Park and are right behind the Heritage Park Museum.
And according to Terrace’s Parks and Recreation Director, Tara Irwin, the idea for the creation of these new courts had initially come about a couple of years ago.
“The City of Terrace was approached originally in 2023 by the Pickleball Club, expressing a need for additional Pickleball Courts as the Sport has been rapidly growing in our Community and so we did look into this project for about a year before we decided to convert one of the Tennis courts into six Pickleball Courts”
The repurposing of the courts was done over a six month or so span throughout the summer of 2024 and Tara Irwin also gave some details on what the construction looked like and how the project went as a whole.
“We did the project primarily In-House so it was our maintenance crew that led the project but we did contract out the fencing but it involved sealing a lot of the cracks that were existing in the courts and then ordering the very specialized paint and painting the courts and then painting the lines, all of that work was done by our maintenance staff, we were battling with some of the weather because it has to be a very particular temperature in order to paint with the specialized paint that we had to use so either too hot or raining or too cold but it was a great project, a lot of different people involved in the planning and implementation”
The rise in the sport’s popularity in the local area has even led to Terrace’s own Mayor, Sean Bujtas, to consider giving it a shot at some point in the future.
“I’m not gonna try it out today cause I got to get down to the Soccer field and coach some Soccer but I think I need to get out here soon and try out Pickelball cause it sure does seem like fun and it seems great, there’s all ages playing Pickelball so it looks like a wonderful sport”
While the exact number of people who showed up to the event isn’t currently known, the turnout was still fairly substantial as many people got to test out their skills and enjoy the food that was provided there as well.